


Waking Up Wrong

by speckledsolanaceae



Series: Seeing You Through Different Times [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Bodyswap, Confessions, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23799253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speckledsolanaceae/pseuds/speckledsolanaceae
Summary: Sometimes the wrong things happen just to make everything a little more right.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Series: Seeing You Through Different Times [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904878
Comments: 56
Kudos: 361





	Waking Up Wrong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angstonly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstonly/gifts).



> Hey, Jac ♡ I really hope you enjoy and that this brings you a little comfort.
> 
> To everyone else! I hope you enjoy as well!! I had a lot of fun writing this!
> 
> To Jeno ^^ happy birthday, sweetheart.

“Fuck!”

Jaemin laughs from the kitchen as Jeno clutches his shin, wheezing over the low coffee table where there’s an aggregated collection of takeout containers in varying states of demolishment. There’s a smear of sauce on the wooden tabletop that he reaches to wipe away as tears collect at the corners of his eyes.

The water in the kitchen shuts off and Jaemin’s reentering the small sitting room with two glasses in hand and a grin curled into his lips. He cooes at the red of pain in Jeno’s face, then laughs again as Jeno straightens and gives him an injured look as he sucks his finger into his mouth. “You didn’t even nick skin,” Jaemin says, voice warm as he sinks back onto the couch cushions and nurses the brim of his glass, eyes glittering with humor. He offers the second cup over and Jeno takes it, forgetting almost instantly to be reluctant.

“S’gonna bruise, though,” Jeno murmurs, but sits close enough for Jaemin to sling his legs over his lap.

“Mm,” Jaemin considers, and cranes his neck to witness the point of contact again, a little strip of pink. He passes his glass to his other hand, kisses his fingertips, and leans to press his chilled fingers against the agitated skin. “Now it won’t dare bruise,” he says, self-assured, then nods at the remote sitting on the other end of the couch next to Jeno’s thigh.

Jeno doesn’t have any interest in correcting the accuracy of Jaemin’s little affectionate absurdities—he _does_ feel better, and that’s simply the way Jaemin works his charms. He grabs the remote and points it to the screen to resume their marathon of Lord of the Rings. They’re eight hours in with twelve more to go and a whole spring break to achieve it. They’ve had a debate sidelining their friendship for years over who’s better: Samwise Gamgee or Éowyn. Jeno is more Éowyn-aligned. Samwise, Jaemin argues, reminds him a little of Jeno, which is flattering in a lot of ways.

If only he could be a hobbit with a future promising a hole in a hill and a vegetable garden and a happy marriage. A husband instead, though. A husband would be nice.

A few more minutes in and Jaemin settles his cup on the table. “Don’t bump into it and knock it over,” he teases, and Jeno gives an appropriate grumble and tweak of the skin at Jaemin's ankle. Jaemin just laughs and snuggles down, pinning Jeno more properly, though he’s not complaining.

An hour in and Jaemin’s nodding off, at which point Jeno pats his shins so they can put the leftovers away. Jaemin obliges and, of course, helps.

“You want me to take the couch?” Jaemin mumbles in question, voice a little off with sleepiness. Jeno pulls him in by the waist to steady him, and Jaemin curls into his neck and side as Jeno shuffles the boxes into the fridge. “Or I could go home.”

“Nah, I’ll take Hyuck’s bed and you can take mine,” he says, nudging the door closed and turning to ruffle Jaemin’s hair in his hands. Jaemin doesn’t complain, leaning into the touch with his eyes closed and a pout on his lower lip at the attention.

“You’re that close?” he asks, pout in his voice, too, but Jeno knows it’s because he’s tired more than anything.

He shrugs and encourages Jaemin out of the kitchen with his hands. “I’ll wash his sheets and he’ll never know.”

Jaemin snuffles a tired laugh, snagging his backpack by the door for the clothes he probably brought along. He has nothing more to say, though, turning into the bathroom right outside the hall and already trying to tug his shirt off.

Jeno stifles a yawn into his shoulder and scopes out the room for anything else he needs to tidy. There’s just their waters left out, and only Jaemin’s isn’t finished. Jeno drains it and drops it onto the counter before making his way to the room he shares with Donghyuck, his roommate currently taking a brief jaunt homeward-bound. 

Jeno has never made a habit of going home for the shorter breaks, if only so he can have unobstructed time with his best friend, whose parents are often out of the country except for designated holidays. If he does go home, Jaemin will come with him. This is the balance they’ve come to rely on, and Jeno’s sister never fails to comment on their freakish rise to intimacy—“The kind of friend you make back when you’re five, you know? Not when you’re nineteen,” she marveled last time he brought Jaemin around.

Jeno doesn’t have one of those, though. He has Jaemin, and he’s more than enough if not better.

He’s pulling on sleeping shorts for courtesy toward Donghyuck when Jaemin shuffles in and tosses himself right on top of Jeno’s duvet. The mattress creaks forlornly.

“Are you needing me to tuck you in?” Jeno chuckles as Jaemin inhales against his pillow.

“Mngrf,” Jaemin says, and Jeno grins as he slips out of the room to go brush his teeth.

* * *

By the time he drops himself into bed, Jaemin is clearly under, cheek smushed hard into Jeno’s pillow and the sheets clutched in his grip up to his chest. Jeno absently wonders if Jaemin will end up drooling onto his pillow with his mouth open like that, but given he plans to do laundry anyway, he doesn’t much care.

He hunkers down, noting absently the citrus shampoo Donghyuck uses that this bed manages to mimic. Across the room, he can see how the light from outside the window curves against Jaemin’s cheekbone and shatters against his eyelashes. Even knocked out so deeply that he’s ended up appearing silly, he manages to look endearing, eyebrows pinched like the beginnings of his dreams concern him profoundly.

Jeno tries not to laugh, plucking off his glasses and leaving them on Donghyuck’s bedside. He still doesn’t turn his back to the center of the room, however.

Sure Jaemin won’t hear him, Jeno whispers an ‘I love you’ across the distance between them.

* * *

He wakes up feeling vaguely disgusting. He can’t explain it well. It’s like he’s been sweating under Donghyuck’s covers all night and has baked a layer of salt over his skin, but he can’t recall ever having woken up to wrestle with the blankets. On top of that, as soon as he reaches for the bedside table for his glasses, he realizes he’s _sore._

Jeno stops moving. He stops everything, really. His mind skids to a halt.

He’s naked.

He’s sweaty and naked and sore and what was confusing turns into bewildered panic.

He pokes himself in the eye when he shoves his glasses on, grappling with the pace of his breathing as he takes in the room he’s in.

It’s not the room he shares with Donghyuck. At all.

There’s a stylized still-life painting backed up against the pale blue wall in front of him. There’s a book on the sturdy, wooden bedside table with a title he’s not familiar with. The digital clock tells him it’s 7:30, and he’s never voluntarily woken up before nine without feeling like death. Not when he’d gone to bed at two in the morning last night.

His hearing kicks in only seconds after his sight, and hearing someone _breathing_ somewhere behind him nearly drops him right into a panic attack.

He twists slowly, taking in the curve of a familiar cheek and the pretty fringe of eyelashes.

“Jaemin?” Jeno squeaks, tugging the blankets up over his body, taking in the rest of the room with rapidly collecting hysteria as… as Jaemin. As someone stirs next to him.

Jeno looks down at his own hands and cries out, slamming himself up against the headboard.

Jaemin wakes up with a gasp, quickly twisting himself to fall onto his forearm and staring Jeno in the face. “What? Jeno, what? What’s wrong?”

It’s Jaemin, but it’s _not._ There’s something different about his face. Jeno can’t place it, but he’s sufficiently freaked out.

He’s naked, sore, sweaty, Jaemin’s here but he’s not, he’s in the wrong room in a bed that’s not his, and he’s wearing a wedding ring.

He cannot speak. There are no words for what’s happening right now. He doesn’t have the capacity to grasp it.

“Jeno?” Jaemin says, softer this time as he scans his face. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“Having one.”

Jaemin blinks at him in surprise, but looks quickly around the room to find something to explain that answer. A killer in the bedroom or enormous spider clinging to the ceiling. He won’t find it, because it’s all the apparently mundane things that are making Jeno feel like he’s dying.

“Where am I?” Jeno asks, and it comes out thinner and higher than he’s ever spoken.

Jaemin’s head whips around and he’s staring at him again. “What?” Jaemin’s naked, too. Jeno’s sore and sweaty because he’s in a body that had sex with this Jaemin last night. He’s married to this Jaemin. He’s married to this Jaemin who’s not concerned with how the sheets pool around his small waist and don’t hide the thin trail of hair leading down from his navel.

“Where am I?” Jeno repeats, even more plaintive this time, and he’s in tears before he even realizes they’re coming.

He hears this Jaemin draw in a sharp breath and shift in bed. “Okay, okay, hold on,” Jaemin says, and his tone has shifted into that achingly-familiar one, the soothing one, the one that makes Jeno feel like Jaemin’s a preschool teacher but with all the love and respect in the world. “I—can I touch you, sweetheart? I’m sorry you’re—can I help you calm down?”

Jeno shakes his head first, too afraid to look away from this approximate Jaemin, but through his swelling tears, he only sees a desperately concerned pinch between Jaemin’s eyebrows. 

He nods. 

Jaemin crawls up to the headboard slowly and gently, reaches to the back of Jeno’s head to bring him softly in against his chest, lips pressed up to his hair. Jeno can hear the panic in Jaemin’s heart, but Jaemin breathes in slow as he strokes through Jeno’s bedhead. It takes him a second to realize his hair’s shorter. He presses his face into Jaemin’s neck. He smells like one would after falling asleep after sex without a shower, but there’s an underlying _something_ that Jeno will never be able to label as anything but Jaemin.

He cries harder.

It only lasts a minute or two at most, though, before Jaemin’s soft voice, the beat of his heart, the careful, measured breaths bring Jeno down again. When Jaemin presses a kiss above the temple of his glasses upon pulling back, Jeno can only stare at him. Jaemin brings his hands up to brush away Jeno’s tears, touch warm and gentle, and Jaemin’s looking at him with such earnest concern and love that Jeno’s suddenly having a hard time processing anything but awe.

“It’s been awhile, huh?” Jaemin says gently. “I haven’t seen you cry in a long time.” He’s so obviously putting so much effort into reading Jeno’s body language that against his better judgment, Jeno’s beginning to feel almost safe in this condition of senselessness. “Can you… can you tell me what just happened? Or should I—should we—” Jaemin swallows. “You can take a shower and I can start breakfast?”

Jeno’s been in love with Jaemin for a long time, now.

For a very confusing moment, he feels an almost crippling amount of affection for a Jaemin that’s not his. Can’t be his. Whatever world this is, it’s not the right one.

“Second one,” Jeno croaks, and Jaemin nods. He doesn’t give or take anything from Jeno, accepting that request and slipping out of bed. Jeno’s stricken by seeing Jaemin like this, and it takes him witnessing his body in full, everything even slightly awkward and still-pubescently bony gone, to realize that Jaemin is _older._ He doesn’t look right because he’s older. He’s grown into everything.

He looks achingly perfect.

Uncomfortably, he understands to a higher degree why he might be sore. But he probably shouldn’t be thinking about that with a Jaemin who’s not his.

Jaemin picks up some underwear from the bottom drawer of a dresser they have on the opposite wall, lips tucked at the corners in an expression Jeno’s used to seeing on his Jaemin’s face when one of their shared friends is upset. Very rarely has Jeno been the cause of that expression.

“Jaemin?”

The look he gets is immediate, and immediately soft, the tension in Jaemin’s expression gone. “Mm?”

“How old are you?”

Jaemin draws in a breath and his eyes flick back and forth between Jeno’s. He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, worrying it as he smooths over the waistband of his briefs with his hands. He looks down at the ground, nudging the underwear drawer closed. “Thirty-one,” he says after a moment. The information doesn’t agitate Jeno—it solidifies a hypothesis he’s been forced to rapidly create in order to accommodate something too suddenly out of his comfort zone. He feels oddly at peace.

After saying it, Jaemin looks back at Jeno. His expression is odd, this time, and never something Jeno’s seen directed at him. If he had to guess at it, he’d assume Jaemin’s guard was up. It’s strange experiencing it, and Jeno’s not sure how to feel about it. After all, this isn’t his Jaemin. “How old are _you,_ Jeno?”

Jeno is shaken for a moment by unexpected admiration. It's not that he expects Jaemin to be thick—he never has been—but it still ignites a respect in him Jaemin has always, always deserved. “Twenty-two,” he tells him, and watches the minute shift in Jaemin’s expression.

His eyes go distant for a breath, he picks at his lips again, and then he’s back. He blinks a few times, opens his mouth, then tilts his head. Gesturing at the door, Jaemin excuses himself and Jeno’s left alone in the bedroom.

For a moment, Jeno can only laugh. He doesn’t know what he could possibly do otherwise. He’s already cried. 

Gingerly, he picks himself out of bed, feeling the ache that is honestly, now that he knows what it is, kind of comforting. His thirties feel so far away, but… just hypothetically, it’s nice to know there’s an existence where he’s thirty-one and getting railed by the love of his life.

Small comforts in a time of high duress.

He finds the full-length mirror on the door by accident and freezes in his tracks. The noise he makes is involuntary.

It’s not like he’s _not_ fit at twenty-two, but it looks different with this body. He stands, just looking at himself, for a minute at the very least. He twists his leg to count the hickies on his inner thigh, presses them gently in curiosity, flexes his ass to confirm that _yes,_ he definitely bottomed—at least for this body’s last night.

He smooths his hands over his body, feeling the dry residue of sex and sweat, and wonders if he actually fell into the best form of impossibility. He could have woken up in any kind of hellscape, and as he adjusts, he finds this one utterly ideal.

He wonders if they have a vegetable garden.

It’s still scary, Jeno considers as he finds the attached bathroom—it’s easy; this house is not large, and the shower is no bigger than the one he has in his apartment with Donghyuck.

It’s still scary.

* * *

By the time he’s climbing out of the shower, everything’s cooled down—his heart, his panic, his mind, and feeling clean helps everything always.

He shuffles through their dresser trying to find his own clothes and is left trying to differentiate one side of the divider from the other. He imagines his literal husband won’t mind if he wears the wrong underwear.

As he shucks on a pair of joggers and rummages for a t-shirt, he thinks about Jaemin back home—whether he’s woken up with a different Jeno on the opposite side of the room. He wonders if thirty-one-year-old Jeno will take the circumstances with far better grace, having known that apartment before. Or if that version of him is even more freaked out, because now his husband is not even remotely that.

He wonders if this is the same timeline.

When he finds his way to the kitchen, Jaemin’s lost in thought with his hands splayed against the counter on either side of the stovetop, head down, legs crossed as he puts all of his weight on his cognitive powers. He’s still only got underwear on. Jeno really puts the effort forward not to be distracted by that. He doesn’t know the moral complexities of the circumstances well enough to be actively attracted to this man. He’s majoring in physical therapy, not philosophy.

Jaemin startles out of his trance when Jeno disturbs a chair at the kitchen table. He sits down as Jaemin stares at him openly. Then his eyes flick over him and his hands rise to pat his own abdomen. He goes pink in the neck. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I—”

“I take it our sex life is good.”

If possible, Jaemin goes pinker. Speechless, his throat works and he turns to shut off the stove. “I know this isn’t a joke because you wouldn’t. Do that to me,” Jaemin says carefully, circumnavigating the sex topic. He blinks a few times more and reaches to rub his face in agitation. He grabs the pan by its handle and brings it to the table with a hot pad. It’s sunny-side eggs. 

Jaemin doesn’t continue that train of thought. “Rice is ready and—” He doesn’t manage to finish the thought, drifting away and back toward their bedroom. Undoubtedly to change.

Despite not knowing his way around this kitchen, occupying himself with breakfast seems the only course of action. While Jeno finds his way around to retrieve the rice, dishes, and then some store-bought kimchi in the fridge, the tension starts to build in his chest again. He sits down and lets out a breath that feels far too heavy and too stiff.

Zoned out, Jaemin takes him by surprise when he sits down across from him.

This time, his eyes are less burdened, though there’s still a tightness around them. “Yeah,” he says, putting his chin in his palm. He’s wearing a wine-colored t-shirt a size too large and pulled at the neck. It’s a lovely color on him. “We have a good sex-life. I hope—”

“I’m fine,” Jeno says because there’s nothing else he _could_ be.

Jaemin’s eyes twinkle and he takes a bowl for himself from the two Jeno set on the table. “Where—when did you come from?” Jaemin swallows once as he takes a portion of rice for himself. “Are we dating yet?”

 _Yet._ Jeno lets out a punched-out breath.

“No,” he says, sounding thin, and only then can he get himself to take the other bowl. “I didn’t realize it was an option.”

Jaemin’s staring at him again—it’s not an odd thing for Jeno to experience most of the time, but these stares aren’t the sweetly absent kind Jaemin usually indulges in. These are intense, searching stares, and it makes him want to wriggle out of his skin a little.

“You really—” Jaemin, too, lets out a breath, though this one’s tinged more with incredulity. “I still can’t believe you. I can’t believe you didn’t know I was in love with you.”

Jeno freezes for the second time upon waking, feeling a trickle of something shudder down his spine. “You’re not,” he denies, aborting his action to reach for the rice in order to commit to this direction of conversation.

“I absolutely was,” Jaemin says, voice getting a little hard around the edges. He’s not moving to continue his breakfast efforts either. “Still am.”

 _“I’m_ in love with you,” Jeno insists, but Jaemin doesn’t find this information impressive. He reckons it must not surprise him—he would hope he’s told Jaemin the why, when, and how he loves him. Jaemin deserves at least that much.

“I fell for you the moment I saw you. You’re _unbelievable.”_

“That’s unrealistic,” Jeno retorts, trying not to smile as something inexplicable, but definitely warm rises up through him. “Love doesn’t work like that.”

Jaemin looks offended, and Jeno laughs. He gets kicked from under the table and winces. The corner of the sole of Jaemin’s foot hits him right in the shin—right where he knocked it into the table last night.

For something so small, the effect it has on his body is alarming. Pain rushes through him and needles up his spine, and Jeno’s hissing in alarm. “Jeno?” Jaemin says, startled and rising from his chair. Jeno can feel his hand in his hair. “Did I hur—just think that there should be more women.”

Jeno’s head is spinning. “What?” he wheezes, confused, and he opens his eyes to the television in the apartment he shares with Donghyuck. _“What?”_ he cries, and whips around to look at Jaemin, who’s taken to shrinking against the arm of the couch in surprise.

“What?” Jaemin squeaks. “More women?”

Jeno blinks. They’re on opposite sides of the couch. He takes in the clean mapping of youth over Jaemin’s face, the glitter of bewilderment in his eyes, the shirt that he’s wearing that is most definitely Jeno’s. This is his Jaemin.

He lets out a beaten breath, taken away for a stunning moment by the vertigo of being where he should be again. “No,” Jeno blurts. “Yeah, no, there should definitely be more women in Lord of the Rings.”

Jaemin gives a weirded-out laugh. It’s charming. “Glad you agree with me,” he says. “Was gonna really question your love for—”

“Jaemin?” Jeno starts, and Jaemin startles again, but looks like he’s trying to adjust to what’s probably a severe level of weird coming from his best friend.

“That’s—that’s me, yes,” Jaemin confirms.

“Would you be interested in dating me?”

Jaemin stares at him.

The intensity is comforting. Jeno knows that this will stay the same for at least nine more years.

“What’s up with you?” Jaemin asks, voice small as he searches Jeno’s face. Despite this response, Jeno’s becoming stubborn in his boldness, now.

“I’m in love with you,” Jeno says. “Do you want to date?”

Jaemin’s mouth opens. He runs his tongue against his ragged bottom lip. He lets out a strained breath, then starts to laugh. “Y-yeah? Yes. Yeah, I would. I would like that.”

Stubbornness aside, it doesn’t stop Jeno from feeling relief. He wonders if this is the way it was always going to go. If nine years from now, he’ll be waking up in Donghyuck’s bed with Jaemin trying to shake off sleep at eleven o’clock, hair a mess and limbs only half-conscious. If he’ll be endeared and pretend, for just a few hours, that he’s twenty-two again, waiting calmly to return to his own Jaemin, who’s undoubtedly freaking out.

Jeno hopes he kisses him.

He wonders if this Jaemin—his own Jaemin—will let him kiss him _now._

“Can I kiss you?” he whispers as a gruesome battle happens on screen, and Jaemin looks so, preciously overwhelmed, but there’s a sort of brilliant joy curling into the corners of his mouth and eyes.

“That would be nice,” Jaemin says, and Jeno crosses the distance between them to reach him. He’s never known what kissing Jaemin would be like, but his chapped lips, his hands immediately reaching to cup his neck, the little huff of happiness between the first kiss and the second… Everything feels just how he would want it to. He wouldn't want anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/speckledsolana)   
>  [curiouscat](https://t.co/zW26zmaxzw?amp=1)   
> 


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